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User blog:Belgiansparten/Horrible Horror - ''Unfriended''
The following blog is an analysis of the following film: Unfriended , in which I share my views on the film, what displeases me about the film and what I would have done to improve upon the premise of the film. Due to the nature of this analysis, it will contain spoilers about the actual film and if you haven't seen the film yet, plan to do so and/or what to keep it spoiler-free, I urge you to leave. I also wants to remind the reader that this is MY opinion on the film and nothing of this is to be taken personal. If you share my vision, disagree completely or want to share your own, feel free to comment. Unfriended is a found footage film from 2014, directed Levan Gadriadze and written by Nelson Greaves. The film follows a chat session between a group of friends on the 1 year anniversary of the death of their friend, Laura Barns. Laura committed suicide after falling victim to cyberbullies, who targeted her relentlessly, after a humiliating video of her surfaced online. Despite the fact that they are on a private chat server, a new member joins them, billie227. Soon they learn that billie227 is no regular user and won't leave. Laura has returned and wants only one thing, to know who posted the video that led her to commit suicide, so she can take bloody revenge! Unfriended is yet another found footage film that have been released in the early 2010's but manage to shake things up a bit, with its clever use of webcam footage and social media as an important theme. It tackles the old "I Know What You Did" ghost story with a refreshing approach. On the surface has a strong message towards the influence of one's online presence and the dangers of cyberbullying. On the internet, posts starts a life of their own and before you know, you lose complete control for it. It also raises questions about who our real friends are and who are actually ready to stab you in the back when an opportunity is given. Quite a terrifying concept. Combine this all with a variety of interesting and gore-y kills and you should have a fantastic movie, right? Seeing the title of this blog, you can guess the answer... Unfriended is the perfect example of a film with great potential and yet having no idea what to do with it. And the problem lies with the character of Laura Barns and the priorities taken by the film. Based on the premise, you would expect that she would focus on finding who posted the video, but this aspect goes mostly ignored for large parts of the films, making you almost forget what drives her. Instead it focus a very long time in uncovering who billie277 is and how they can remove her from the chat, and on a game played by Laura, only meant to humiliate the group with their own secrets, secrets unrelated to the suicide, mind you, and turn them on each other. By doing this, it fails to maintain the viewer's interest in the mystery of the film, namely who killed Laura. And due to the constant bickering, the viewer also can't be bothered to care who will be next as the viewer has no reason to sympathize with any of the characters. Another problem with the game is the fact that it starts pretty late in the film, after Laura already killed two of the friends. The game itself is rather uneventful and the one death that occurred as part of the game, is the result of a dark trick played on them by Laura and have no relation with the actual suicide... In fact, only the death of two of the friends have any actual connection to her suicide The rest is killed for either trying to escape Laura or by tricks played by Laura, making the constant bickering through the film rather pointless and dull, and only seems to serve to show how easily they turn on each other. What would have made the film better? The film would have been better if the sequence where they tried to figure out who billie227 and how to throw her out was shorter and if the game started early on. The first is something they could easily do, by quickly establishing who it was (it was clear from the beginning to the viewer so...) and make clear that it is impossible to remove her or leave the computer as long as the game is played . She could kill the guy who tried with Trojan software to make a point but all other kills should ideally be part of the game. Seeing how she wants revenge on the one who filmed her and led her to commit suicide, it would only make sense to make that an integral part of the game. To make things easy, the game is best divided in "rounds" where each time of the "contestants" falls off each round, and by fall off, I mean killed. The goal of the game is to find the one responsible, with the catch that the perpetrator either have to step forwards or that the friends have to out the person who is responsible (or they believe is responsible). When a person is accused by a majority of the group to be that person, he or she will be killed. When this happens, the accused can leave the room as he or she so pleases, as in a matter of minutes, Laura will murder him or her. The game continues until the real perp is caught. Once that happens, she will stop with killing people. To guide the game, Laura would reveal some of their secrets, like she did in the actual film. The horror in this scenario, doesn't only stem from the fact that they will die violently, after being humiliated, but that their execution papers are signed by the very people they believed to be their friends. Knowing that you are innocent, yet being condemned to death by your friends, of which one is the true perpetrator, is quite horrifying if you ask me. The ending of the film would be similar to the actual ending, with two remaining survivors, where both are asked to tell Laura who did it. One would tell her that they can't believed the other would do something like this, while the other desperately accuses the other without second thought. With the last accusation, Laura kills the accused, before revealing that she knew that remaining survivor, Blaire (I would keep that) was the perpetrator all along. With all the friends dead, the perpetrator is 'unfriended'. I would keep the original ending of the film though, where Laura exposes the perp to whole world but would add the webcam footage of how she allowed Laura to kill her friends to save her own hide. In the post-credit scene, Blaire was killed eventually, making the online reveal rather pointless. If the film needs a post-credit scene, I would keep Blairer alive with Laura haunting her to make it her impossible to commit suicide. After all, is there a worse hell than a world where everyone hates you and where there is no release? Category:Blog posts